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The role of the teacher in magic

© Taylor Ellwood

In the magical world, many people find themselves teachers or mentors who help them take their first trembling steps into the world of magic. Even later, after a person has been on a magical path or paths for years, there can still be a time when a mentor comes into your life to offer you insight into the various traditions and systems of magic. While this can be a wonderful experience there is always the risk of dealing with a mentor who is not really suited to teach you. While the saying goes that when the time is right a person will come into your life to teach you, it's not necessarily accurate, or perhaps it is accurate because what you are learning are hard life lessons as opposed to what you thought you might learn.

My own experience with a mentor in magical practice was like that. While my mentor taught me a lot about magic, introducing me to Quabala, and to chaos magic, what I really learned from him was who I didn't want to be. My mentor gave me a mirror through his words to see myself, but he also showed me in his own actions and words, his attitudes, what I didn't want to be. When I left my mentor I had lots of doubts about practicing magic. I wondered why I did it. I wondered what the point was to practicing magic. How did it improve my life? These questions would never have arose if I had not encountered this mentor, and seen in him a cynicism about magic that caused me to wonder why I did it. Those questions led to me to two of my hardest years when it came to magical practice. But out of that time I came to my calling with my spirituality and I found a stronger awareness of who I am and where I wanted to be and what I wanted to be doing.

For a long time I felt bitterness toward this mentor. After all, I hadn't wanted to question why I believed in the spiritual practices I'd chosen for myself. But one day, recently, when in fact I had gotten back in touch with him, I realized I had no words to say to him. I wasn't angry anymore, or bitter. I knew I'd just be wasting energy if I told him how I felt he'd hurt me with his cynicism. And then I realized that perhaps his cynicism had a purpose in my life, perhaps it was the rod of the Zen master, striking the disciple, focusing him in a direction that he didn't want to go. And when I realized that I was actually thankful for this mentor of mine and I was ready to let go of my feelings. I knew I could move on, that I had moved on. He'd taught me what I needed to learn.

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